Thinking can be dangerous. I have always been a lover of close thinking – though never very good at participating – it is instructive to listen to people who can divide up the meaning of sentences and slice away at them as you might a cake with smaller and smaller portions. We can see an analogous thing happening in science as we learn to go deeper into smaller subjects until today no one is an expert in their entire field, just one part of it. The days of the philosopher scientist have vastly changed since the eighteenth century.
Like all things of course when you think so accurately you are defining each and every word, each and every step, you can put yourself into an intellectual cul-de-sac which may be pretty despairing. Several notable French philosophers committed suicide in the post war period because they became pessimists due to their own inability to think themselves out of their own logic.
It is often sensible to note whilst you think about life, the universe and everything that that includes the muddled thinking of the rest of humanity and though we are all wrong we are not totally wrong, there is an essence of philosophy in all of us and when we get down in spirit we should perhaps go to other minds and share their views of life. We may disagree with their assumptions and even their conclusions but finding out where they were right may often save our thinking.
Poetry is a soothing balm to the over active brain.